I’m a part of Libro.fm‘s influencer program, which means I get to choose from a selection of audiobooks to post about and review every month! Libro.fm is an audiobook service that makes it possible for readers to buy audiobooks and support physical bookstores (you could even choose which store to support if you wanted to), and their service is available worldwide (although their membership is limited to the US).
In this post, I’m sharing the audiobooks I picked from their January and February selections, because I forgot to post this in early January as well. I chose to download 4 of books in these two months, based on which ones appealed to me most by reading the synopsis and the Goodreads reviews.
January Audiobook Picks
Echo Brown – Black Girl Unlimited
Echo Brown is a wizard from the East Side, where apartments are small and parents suffer addictions to the white rocks. Yet there is magic . . . everywhere. New portals begin to open when Echo transfers to the rich school on the West Side, and an insightful teacher becomes a pivotal mentor. Each day, Echo travels between two worlds, leaving her brothers, her friends, and a piece of herself behind on the East Side. There are dangers to leaving behind the place that made you. Echo soon realizes there is pain flowing through everyone around her, and a black veil of depression threatens to undo everything she’s worked for.
Heavily autobiographical and infused with magical realism, Black Girl Unlimited fearlessly explores the intersections of poverty, sexual violence, depression, racism, and sexism—all through the arc of a transcendent coming-of-age.
A powerful memoir for fans of Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson and American Street by Ibi Zoboi.
I’m not going to lie, this choice was based on the cover in large part. It just looks so beautiful. I was also a big fan of Piecing Me Together, and I’m a big fan of audiobooks that are narrated by the author. I’m hoping to listen to this book during Black History Month.
Marc-Uwe Kling – Qualityland
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY meets 1984. In the near-future, all decision-making is automated, until one man makes a brazen choice of his own, with global consequences.
Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.
In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can’t quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy meets 1984”? Sold!
February Audiobook Picks
Margarita Montimore – Oona Out of Order
Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order…
Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met?
Oona Out of Order is a remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of sequence. Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.
The synopsis reminds me a lot of 13 Going On 30, so I quickly knew I absolutely had to read this. This sounds like a really fun read.
Amy Bonnaffons – The Regrets
Reality and dream collide in Amy Bonnaffons’s dazzling, darkly playful debut novel about a love affair between the living and the dead.
For weeks, Rachel has been noticing the same golden-haired young man sitting at her Brooklyn bus stop, staring off with a melancholy air. When, one day, she finally musters the courage to introduce herself, the chemistry between them is undeniable: Thomas is wise, witty, handsome, mysterious, clearly a kindred spirit. There’s just one tiny problem: He’s dead.
Stuck in a surreal limbo governed by bureaucracy, Thomas is unable to “cross over” to the afterlife until he completes a 90-day stint on earth, during which time he is forbidden to get involved with a member of the living — lest he incur “regrets.” When Thomas and Rachel break this rule, they unleash a cascade of bizarre, troubling consequences.
Set in the hallucinatory borderland between life and death, The Regrets is a gloriously strange and breathtakingly sexy exploration of love, the cataclysmic power of fantasies, and the painful, exhilarating work of waking up to reality, told with uncommon grace and humor by a visionary artist at the height of her imaginative power.
This sounded really weird, and I’m intrigued. I also think the cover looks really cool! It reminds me a little of the movie Last Christmas, which didn’t really work for me, but I did love the premisse.
Are you listening to any audiobooks this month? I’m hoping to listen to some of my older audiobooks as well!
Hopefully I’ll get to listen to a few books for Black History Month, I’ve already started Such a Fun Age, which was one of my earlier Libro.fm picks.
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Anniek's Library 
These all sounds really interesting. Love the cover for Qualityland. Can’t wait to see your thoughts on these.
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I’m very curious about them!
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